Former President Bill Clinton tops that list with his statement that his wife has no chance of winning South Carolina because people will vote based on race and gender as an expression of who they are, or then there was Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and his comments that were more telling of his thought patterns than those he was trying to cast dispersions on saying that Democrats should not support the candidacy of Illinois Senator and Clinton Rival Barack Obama because conservative voters are not ready for a African American President, or, of course, former Congresswoman and 1984 Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Geraldine Ferraro, a principle Clinton fundraiser, and her assessment that if Senator Obama were another race he would not be as strong as he was in the primary. There just didn't seem like their was any escaping it.

Yesterday though it wasn't Clinton or her supporters, now faded off into the palpably obscure, Senator Clinton only coming out now and then to occasionally campaign with her one time rival This time it was Senator Obama tossing the race card on the table at a fundraiser in Florida. There he told supporters that a principle Republican tactic this race will be saying "He's young, he's inexperienced, and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black."

It's not the first time that race has come up in conjunction with the Obama campaign. First arising from the fringe element of his supporters, few can perhaps forget the racially charged sermons of one time Trinity United Church Pastor Jeremiah Wright, the man the Illinois Senator had to disown as his spiritual mentor as he watched his sermons and statements come to the national forefront, or one time friend Father Micheal Pfleger, the now disciplined South Side Catholic Priest, who stood at the front of the same church and mocked Obama's opponents. Their statements, whether it was Wright and "Hillary Clinton ain't never been called a N*****" sermon, or Pfleger and his sermon charging that Hillary Clinton believed she was entitled to the Democratic nomination, not least of all because she's white but that she was dismayed that a "black" man was trying to take it from her, reflected moments of disturbing racism to come from the pulpit aimed at offering political support to Senator Obama. Then, of course, came the statement from Obama saying that his grandmother was "a typical white woman" with a latent racist streak in her.

Let's face the fact, the issue of race has dominated this race in this election season, unless you were old enough to remember South Carolina's Strom Thurmond and his run for the Presidency as a Southern Dixiecrat in the 1950's chances are you can't remember the last time it was an issue like it has seemed to become this time around. Even when the Reverend Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic nomination in 1988, even though charges rose of racism, the issue wasn't as charged as it seems to be today.

Yet the race issue has dominated not the minds of Republican voters but rather it has dogged the Democrats and their campaigns. Raised time and time again by the Democrats in their Primary runs or projecting forward to the race in general and the troubles that could potentially be faced by a Obama candidacy it hasn't been the Republicans who have made an issue of Senator Obama's race, but rather it has always been the Democrats.

There little mention is given to the popularity enjoyed by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice or former Secretary of State Colin Powell, two African American Republicans that many in the party had wanted to see as potential Presidential nominee's in the 2008 race. That support had nothing to do with their race or the color of their skin and had everything to do with the depth of their experience and the way they spoke to the values of those voters. But that is left out by speeches like this made by the Illinois Senator.

Nor is much mention made of the fact that the current choice topping the list of potential running mates is Louisianna Governor Bobby Jindal.

Jindal runs contrary to the entire notion that Senator Obama is putting forth. Touted as the best choice for Vice President by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and as potentially the next Ronald Reagan by conservative pundit and radio mainstay Rush Limbaugh the Louisiana Governor enjoys a certain rockstar status in the Republican Party. He also happens to have "a funny name" by the standards of a society where a great deal of the names are Anglo-European. As he likes to point out when it is mentioned, Bobby is a nickname adopted early in his life, as a small child, because of his love of the Brady Bunch, a popular show in the day. Actually his given name is Piyush...

An Indian American, the son of immigrants to Baton Rouge, his father a graduate student who had arrived in the country only the year before, that aspect is largely left unmentioned as conservatives and Republicans look at him. His race and where his parents are from, they hold little significance or importance to them as they consider him as the second name on a GOP ticket or as a potential Presidential contender in future White House runs. Rather, it's his experience despite his young age, almost a decade younger than Senator Obama, and how he speaks to the issues, which holds a great deal of appeal to them as they find him as a spokesman for a number of policies that talk about things that are important to them.

Race has very little to nothing to do with the popularity that he is enjoying within the Republican Party.

But then little is mentioned of it or any of these things because it runs contrary to the message that the Obama Campaign wants to run with, namely that there is an underlying racism in the Republican Party that is going to use the color of his skin as an election issue. In other words, as he claims that the GOP is going to use scare tactics in order to try and defeat him he uses scare tactics based on the exact premise that he says that they will use to try and shore up support for his candidacy and his bid for the White House.

There he plays off of a basic fear, a fear once told in a story by former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts when talking about his father who had said to him "A black man voting Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders." It has little to do with this new politics of hope that Barack Obama talks about or this "Change you can believe in" but rather has everything to do with a politics of scare tactics that doesn't talk about ideas or policies but that constantly points backwards looking for scapegoats and someone to blame.

Like a great many of these claims or a great many of these tactics, it doesn't have to be based on fact or even on empirical evidence, there doesn't have to be proof, it just has to be presented as fact in a way that appeals to the basic and base fears of people who generally want to believe that. There, if people want to believe it they will believe it and perception becomes reality. With that it becomes a powerful political tool to use and one that is really not really new in the realm of political strategy.

None of this is to say that there aren't going to be people who do vote on race or that there are those who will use it as a deciding factor, there are those across the political spectrum and across racial lines. But what Senator Obama seems to be doing is attributing racism to the Republican Party that just hasn't been there, racism that has really thus far only been seen in his own party as the race became a rougher one, a more bloodied battle and the two remaining contenders fought for every last vote in every last state.

But then just a few thoughts I suppose....